


And Either Must Die at the Hand of the Other

by wolf antlers (space_adventures)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, No Horcruxes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 03:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18358130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_adventures/pseuds/wolf%20antlers
Summary: Harry is 15 when he first hears the prophecy, and suddenly his entire life clicks into place.





	And Either Must Die at the Hand of the Other

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little one shot for Camp NaNo, dedicated to [Raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensFlight/pseuds/RavensFlight) and Brie (I'm not sure if she even uses her AO3 anymore) for putting up with me begging for ideas for another one shot and being generally annoying.

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…_

_And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…_

_And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…_

Harry is 15 when he first hears the prophecy, and suddenly his entire life clicks into place.

 _He will have a power the Dark Lord knows not_. Marked as an equal. They’re soulmates. They’re soulmates and it had never even occurred to Harry before now that it could even be possible. He remembers Hermione researching his scar and coming across soulmate marks, how they appear after one has raised their hand against the other. They dismissed it as ridiculous — how could Harry Potter be soulmates with the Dark Lord Voldemort? But now all he can think is how Voldemort didn’t know and how he tried to kill a young boy, barely old enough to talk, and how his killing curse backfired because this boy was his equal in every single magical way.

“Why didn’t you tell me before now,” Harry asks calmly, as though Sirius hadn’t _died_ just half an hour ago, as if he hadn’t seen the only person who could be a real parent to him fall through a magical artifact no one had come through alive again because he was trying to protect Harry.

He feels wound tighter than, god, anything and one more thing going slightly wrong would make him burst.

Dumbledore leans over as if he understands what he feels (he doesn’t, he _can’t_ ) and says “I didn’t think you were ready, Harry, to know how deep your connection with Voldemort really goes.”

And he supposes, if he weren’t on the verge of destroying Dumbledore’s entire office, that could be reasonable, but there’s the bigger, stronger part of him thinking how unfair this all is, how he’s partially known since second year, when he and Hermione had tried to figure out why he has Parseltongue, before Hermione was petrified, before he fought a boy who looked so much like him, who he was _soulbound to_.

He destroyed Dumbledore’s office, spent the whole night feeling awful and scrawled ‘fuck you’ on his arm with red ink and watched it sink in to his bones and knew it would appear on Voldemort’s and took a small victory in a night of losses.

* * *

It took two years before Voldemort was killed, full of assassination attempts and death (of Remus, of Tonks, of Moody and Dumbledore, of Snape, of Colin Creevey, even Marietta Edgecombe), and eventually Neville killed Voldemort with the sword of Gryffindor while he and Harry dueled, and Harry took out Bellatrix Lestrange for him because soulmates are always discovered in the most inconvenient of times.

Neville and Harry bonded over their mutual dislike of their soulmates and found themselves sticking together but never really falling in love, because, as Hermione found out, one could never love anyone as much as they would love their soulmate. And honestly, it just adds another thing to hate Voldemort for on that long, long list, and he can hear the cold high laughter in his ears every time he thinks about it, knows Neville hears Bellatrix’s cackle, and they hold each other tighter on those awful nights, where nothing feels right but they can feel comforted in the arms of someone else who has gone through the same thing.

When they break apart, it’s for the the better, because they’re both healed and they don’t need each other anymore. And Harry still occasionally thinks of how Voldemort would be laughing at him from the depths of Hell and how he craves for Voldemort to still be alive out of stupid, magical desires, but he knows, all in all, everything is better the way it is, with Voldemort dead and almost but not quite a distant memory.


End file.
